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Comment by beamatronic | Hacker News Reader

They may not be able to keep that name very much longer in the current context

Dixie cups aren't named after the south. They aren't even a southern company. They are named after the Dixie doll company of New York.

OP never said they were named after the South. Just implied that having the same name could still be a problem. Github master branches have nothing to do with slavery but they still got rid of the term to avoid any possible connections one may make.

Fair enough. I guess some consider things like this progress, but it seems pretty silly to me. There are still plenty of females out there named Dixie. I guess they should start submitting their requests for a name change just in case, ya know, some ignorant person tries to accuse her family of racism...

In the current climate, that latter scenario doesn't seem that far-fetched.

They could pull a "Lady A" and rename them "D Cups", but that has connotations, too.

I think that kind of name change would require a novelty shape of cups...

According to this [1] the name Dixie Cups was intentionally chosen as a reference to the South

[1]: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-unnatural-hi...

That's not at all what that states.

It references the Dixie doll company, "dixies" (ten dollar bills in Louisiana whose origin comes from "dix"), and "Ice Cream Dixies."

If you disagree, you can provide a direct quote.

The article states that its a reference to the steadfastness and reliability of Louisiana currency. My understanding is that that's where the term "Dixie" in the South came from. Some people believe that the shared etymology should be enough to cancel the term.

It's a bit tenuous, but it doesn't seem any less tenuous than the association between the "master" branch on git with the subjugation of slavic people.

Pretty sure Dixie comes from the Mason-Dixon Line between Pennsylvania and Maryland.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie#Region

That's one theory, and another is that it came from Louisiana currency. My understanding is that the precise origins of the term are unclear.

ah, yes, farther down that wikipedia page that is mentioned... Never heard of it before.

This is worth a read: https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/06/what-dix...

Dixie was a popular term around this time and has a few different origins. Again, in Louisiana, it was due to "dix" being the French word for 10. It states this in the article you linked. Eventually, Louisiana became known as "Dixieland" and the term ultimately was used to refer to all of the south. Dixie also came to be because of the Mason Dixon line, but this is not referenced anywhere in Dixie Cup's history. Again, they were a northern company.

Are you confusing them with Dixie Crystals?

Sorry I don't know what Dixie Crystals are. Just wanted to point out the shared lineage between Dixie Cups and the confederacy because it seemed topical

I mean, you should see the replies to Red Hat ads on twitter. Origin really doesn't matter.

Twitter (and "social media" in general [0]) is an extreme outlier.

Cancel culture is real, and a bit of real progress might be happening too, but judging it simply based on twitter is like judging anything based on what the most abrasive drunks throw at each other in pubs.

[0] the big problem of twitter and FB is that really anyone can talk to anyone, just comment whatever their completely unsolicited opinion happens to be. there's no moderation. there are likes, but there's no downvote. at least on reddit each community can set and try to keep their norms. and HN has dang :)

Different Dixie, dolls not confederate states...

Anyway, I wish people paid attention to the corporate practices and ownership behind brand names.

Spoiler alert: Dixie cups are a subsidiary of Koch Industries (via Georgia Pacific).

the dolls that the company name derived from were idyllic portrayals of slave life:

https://www.dailycitizen.news/news/lifestyles/town-crier-dix...

https://images.app.goo.gl/rbZRdCejSCa8MHuK8

For reference here is a painting uses the same archetypes that the dolls reference: https://images.app.goo.gl/E1twLvbmKW4YHNen8

So the cups may be just some good paper cups, but really no way out of where that name comes from.

This probably shouldn't be downvoted. It is likely true, no matter how ridiculous.

What's the current context? I've never heard the name Dixie cup before, I guessed from the article that it's just a paper cup?

Not an american, but I'm guessing they're referring to the fact that Dixie is a nickname for the Southern US, in particular the states that were part of the Confederacy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie

EDIT for those on a downvoting spree: I don't mean that the above meaning of Dixie is the origin of the Dixie Cup name, just that that's what I thought the original poster was referring to.

Make All Google Again :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_cup#Dixie_cups

As an American, Dixie cups are dixie cups :) I know, that's no answer but that was my intent, I do not think we use the term everyday and prefer to say paper cups, but if someone said "dixie cups" I would not be surprised, just like in some other places you could "xerox" a document instead of "photocopying" it.

It's ok. The cups aren't named after the Confederate south. Op doesn't know what they are talking about.

I got a kick out of the inventor's name Lawrence Luellen the last name in particular. I guess people in the US gave up trying to spell the Welsh surname Llywelyn.

Sounds like the person whose name it was also gave up trying to use Cymraeg, otherwise they'd perhaps be CluEllen.

Don't know how long off the boat they were, but often misspellings in UK surnames arise across generations in records. I guess because the family themselves are totally illiterate.

Also, IIUC on immigration to USA officials would record your surname on your papers and that became _the_ spelling, so that might also explain it?

I'd guess they gave up on expecting other people to figure out the pronunciation.

Probably about a third of the people I meet pronounce my name wrong. It's a bit tiresome, but I wager if my name was Llywelyn it would be even worse.

Wasn't there a Doug Llywelyn on the show, The People's Court? Any of us who saw daytime TV in the 1980's know how to pronounce it..

That was something like 80 years after the invention of the dixie cup though, so I doubt that TV show would have helped anybody in America struggling with explaining the name Llywelyn to other Americans in the late 19th or early 20th centuries.

The assumption that Americans anglicized their names did so by accident because they were illiterate is just silly. I'm sure that happened sometimes, but loads of people anglicized their names deliberately in an attempt to conform with local expectations. One of my great-great-grandfathers, a literate German speaking immigrant to America, changed his name from Müller to Miller. Why? Well I can't ask him, but probably because it was the thing to do. This sort of thing was very common particularly during that time period. The later means the same thing, sounds about the same, but crucially would be more familiar to anglophone Americans. And Müller is comparably easy.

(To be clear, my last name is not Miller; I have an non-anglicized but reasonably common Italian surname.)

I'm not sure why people don't like your comment. It's the most likely answer to the previous poster's question.

Yeah, I'm confused as well. I wasn't agreeing with them the original comment, just explaining what I thought they were referring to.

My guess would be people not reading user names and assuming I'm the person who originally brought up the name.

Because it's not true. Dixie cups are named after a line of Dolls. Prior to that, they were called "Health Kups".

The Dixie cup ruined the word Dixie for me when I was a little kid because of its use to collect urine samples, before I learned about what Dixie means in regard to the South.

Solo cup and Dixie cup are pretty well known, heck I’m not American and I’m aware of both references.

Dixie cups are usually referred to the smaller water cooler cups, solo cups are usually the bigger ones used for beer and soft drinks.

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